On the morning of the day before the July 23 2008 European Commission report on Bulgaria, a thunderstorm broke over Sofia, with rain in torrents and lightning forking the sky. A little while later, the weather steadily calmed. It was a fitting analogy to Bulgaria’s political storm ahead of the EC report.
Leaked drafts of the report and of a report by the European anti-fraud office, Olaf, in the week ahead of publication of the EC’s findings on Bulgaria’s shortcomings in fighting organised crime and corruption had brought thunder from the opposition, from talk of trying to impeach President Georgi Purvanov, to boycotts of the no-confidence debate that the opposition had requested to a wholesale boycott of Parliament itself, and to parties calling variously for the resignation of the entire Cabinet or clusters of individual ministers.
The Olaf report dominated the Bulgarian media on July 16. Just one example, daily newspaper Sega, described the report as “extremely critical” and outlined how it made references to links between Government members and companies suspected of embezzling EU funding, as well as to government members of attempting to influence the investigation.
Mass-circulation daily Trud said on the same day that the Olaf report held that damage of more than 14 million euro had been inflicted on the budget through "suspicious" projects, and that a further 32.4 million euro's worth in document fraud have been established by Olaf.
The Olaf report named "The Nikolov-Stoykov Group" as an alleged "criminal network made up of over 50 Bulgarian, European and offshore companies, controlled and/or financed by Mario Nikolov and Lyudmil Stoykov, suspected of having close ties to the current Government,” Trud said.
“Influential forces within the Bulgarian Government and/or state agencies do not have an interest in seeing the eventual punishment of anyone in the criminal gangs who has embezzled EU funds,” the report said.
The following day, political temperatures rose to match those of an already sweltering Bulgaria as news agency Reuters reported that if Bulgaria did mot step up fight against corruption, “[Brussels] is set to strip Bulgaria of about 500 million euro in pre-accession funds, already frozen due to EU fraud probes”.
Reuters said that suspended payments within the three pre-accession programmes, Phare, Sapard and Ispa, were likely to be cancelled. The EC rejected the Reuters story as speculation.
Several of the top politicians who found themselves under attack rushed to say that there was no “political umbrella”, a phrase popular in Bulgarian parlance, over organised crime. Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev and Interior Minister Mihail Mikov were among those issuing such denials, with Mikov adding that the Olaf report sounded as if it had been compiled from reports in the Bulgarian-language tabloid yellow press.
But there was more thunder when a draft emerged recommending that two agencies, respectively under the control of Finance Minister Plamen Oresharski and Regional Development and Public Works Minister Assen Gagaouzov, should be deprived of the right to sign contracts involving European funds.
Purvanov, already the subject of talk of impeachment and calls “to his face” by Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria Ivan Kostov to resign, let it be known that he had asked the State Agency for National Security to investigate the ties alleged by the Olaf report to exist between organised crime and Government figures.
Purvanov also gave the dailies plenty of headlines on July 18 by saying that he had not hidden the fact that Lyudmil Stoikov donated 50 000 leva to his campaign. From a list made public by Purvanov, it emerged that Stoikov had sent two contributions of 25 000 leva via his companies Ladimex and Eurometal.
On July 18, Trud and another mass-circulation daily, 24 Chassa, reported that Simeon Saxe-Coburg’s National Movement for Stability and Progress – which abstained in the most recent no-confidence vote, earlier this year – was considering leaving the tripartite Cabinet coalition. In the ensuing hours, no senior leader of the NMSP went on record confirming or denying this, and none was prepared to express a view in public.
Fully prepared to express a view was Boiko Borissov, the mayor of Sofia and “informal” leader of the Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria, the party said by pollsters to be certain of winning the largest share of votes in Bulgaria’s next parliamentary elections, currently scheduled for 2009. Borissov called for early elections, for Purvanov to step up and take responsibility for the actions of the coalition Government that he had been instrumental in forming, and said that the opposition should boycott the vote of no confidence in the Cabinet.
In another story on July 18 that went unconfirmed, daily Monitor said that the NMSP was considering proposing lowering the bar for approval of an impeachment motion from 160 of the 240 votes in the National Assembly to 121.
As yet more details of the EC report leaked out, including recommendations that the State Agency for National Security be placed under parliamentary control and that recruiting policy for the police be improved so as to professionalise the service, talk of impeaching Purvanov began to give way to talk of moving a motion calling for his resignation. By July 19, newspaper and television journalists had unearthed any number of “experts” on Bulgaria’s constitution who pointed out that simple arithmetic showed that the opposition would not be able to muster the required number of votes in the National Assembly to send Purvanov on trial in the Constitutional Court.
And Kostov said that Purvanov should give Stoikov his money back.
In an interview published on July 21 by 24 Chassa, Purvanov said that if there were facts showing that organised crime had the protection of a “political umbrella”, the officials involved should be held politically and criminally liable; if there were no such facts, action should be taken to clear Bulgaria’s image.
Purvanov said, according to 24 Chassa: “Will Ivan Kostov say how the large industrial and tourist facilities he gave to Stoikov will be returned to the state? Ivan Kostov is the last person to comment on the issue because his name is emblematic of this element of the transition”.
Purvanov said of the EC report “instead of getting offended, we should look into our problems to which the strongly critical remarks point”.
Purvanov said that with Stanishev at its head, the Cabinet would stay in office until the end of its term.
On the same day, Borissov, never one to miss out on a good idea, told journalists that Purvanov should give Stoikov his money back.
On July 22, DSB deputy chairperson Ekaterina Mihailova said that it would be “comical” to boycott Parliament in August, although she declined to rule out a boycott in September after the end of the summer recess.
By then, it was well-known, if only on the basis of media reports based on further leaks about the EC report, that Brussels would not recommend a safeguard clause against Bulgaria, however strong the language of the report and the battery of other recommendations for urgent and thorough reforms.
It was a strange summer storm, one that broke ahead of the report that caused it rather than afterwards. But while weather forecasters predicted that the skies over Sofia would see more thunderstorms for the rest of the week, it seemed a reasonable certainty that after the July 23 release of the official version of the EC report, storm clouds would gather anew. The question was how long they would last, and whether they would have any enduring effect.
